Mileage Report: Extreme Commuting
Extreme commuting has nothing to do with dirt biking, skateboarding or skydiving to work; it’s defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as someone who spends more than 90 minutes per day on their way to the office. Yup, that’s us. Being based in downtown Chicago, some of our commutes are miserable and can bring out the worst — or best for some — gas mileage in the cars we test. We wanted to give an idea of what to expect in these conditions by tracking our gas mileage.
While we don’t have a controlled environment like that at the Cars.com offices, we do have the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Stevenson and Dan Ryan highways — four of the most congested roads in Chicago. My real-world commute averages 35 miles one way from the western suburbs to downtown Chicago. It takes 90 minutes on good days and up to three hours on bad days. Those are really bad days. Speeds average 22 to 25 mph and the number of stops is more than I care to think about.
Like our Mileage Challenges, all mileage data is collected from the car’s on-board trip computer. As we've reported before they are generally accurate, especially when calculating trips of this length.
The 2011 Chevrolet Cruze and 2011 Hyundai Elantra are two popular commuter cars with high-mileage promises on the highway. We can forget about hitting anything close to these cars’ highway ratings on this commute to the suburbs. The Elantra scored just under its 29 mpg city rating, while the Cruze was a few mpg over its 24 mpg city rating. I also put the 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport to the test. Like Corvettes before this one, the inside gets uncomfortably toasty in heavy traffic, and the center console can almost be used to store hot lunches.
2011 Chevrolet Cruze
- 1.4-liter four-cylinder, five-speed automatic
- EPA rating (city/highway/combined): 24/36/28 mpg
- Trip mpg: 28.0
- Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes
- Trip miles: 38.3
- Average speed: 22.7 mph
- Outside temp: 62.1 F
2011 Hyundai Elantra
- 1.8-liter four-cylinder, six-speed automatic
- EPA rating (city/highway/combined): 29/40/33
- Trip mpg: 28.8
- Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
- Trip miles: 31.9
- Average speed: 22.0 mph
- Outside temp: 64.9 F
2011 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport
- 6.2-liter V-8, six-speed manual
- EPA rating(city/highway/combined): 16/26/19
- Trip mpg: 16.6
- Time: 1 hour, 18 minutes
- Trip miles: 34.7
- Average speed: 25 mph
- Outside temp: 73.9 F
Previous
Subscribe to our feed
Email us your tips!
This posting explains why an EV or hybrid will make sense as a commute vehicle. 0 gas use, 0 emission (during the stop portion of the jam for hybrids). The time one spends idling - emission and gas cost - if one start doing the Math, it's gonna add up quickly.
Honda Insight, cost not too much more as the Cruze/Elantra. WIth incentives, a lot of hybrids are <$25K for you to pick! Vehicles with idling stop technology is the other choice (less ideal esp if traffic is just painfully slow but never stop).
Also consider metro areas out west like mine that have extreme hill-climbs as part of the commute. That's also a MPG killer.
This might not have anything to do with cars, but it does have to do with commuting...
If you don't want to deal with rush hour traffic, try joining your company gym or a gym near your workplace so that you can workout/ or do something you like doing instead of spending time in traffic....
When you hit the road later on, you'll have a faster ride home because the traffic should have cleared up by then.
This works only for some commuters, and it works for me, just throwing it out there in case anybody wants to make their life a little easier.
From the three pictures posted I find it interesting the Hyundai design is attractive and fresh while the Cruze and Corvette look bland. I thought the Cruze was a newer design?